Howard Price Sr., pastor of Eastwood Baptist Church, Columbia, celebrated 60 years in the ministry July 16. Members from the six churches he has served honored him with a day of celebration, which concluded with the announcement that a prayer garden will be built at Eastwood and named in honor of Price and his wife of 62 years, the former Virginia Shuman of Allendale.
Howard Price Sr.Memories and highlights of Price’s ministry include the re-opening of Congaree Baptist Church in Gadsden, the oldest Baptist Church in Richland County, established in 1765; naming the first female training union director at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Rockingham, N.C.; and establishing Eastwood Baptist Church, where whites and blacks have worshipped together since 1972.
Ordained in 1946 at Riverside Baptist Church (now Sunset Drive Baptist Church in West Columbia), Price served Riverside and Congaree Baptist churches until he left to serve in Rockingham, N.C.
In 1959, he became associate pastor of First Baptist Church, Columbia, where he served for 26 years, during which time he also was missions minister for Central and Eastwood Baptist churches. Eastwood later became a self-supporting church and moved to Clemson Road. For the past 39 years, Price has served as its pastor.
Price was born in the sand hills of South Carolina, near Blaney. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina in 1950, and a master of divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Seminary, Wake Forest, in 1958.